He Can't Put It Out is a 1917 poster from the American Issue Publishing Company, the Anti-Saloon League's press in Westerville, Ohio, drawn by Sam Fickel. A heavy man in a top hat labeled "Liquor Interests" runs from a lit firecracker labeled "Public Indignation."
What the sheet prints
A cartoon in two labels. A fat man in a top hat, a familiar shorthand for moneyed interests, scrambles away from a firecracker that towers over him with its fuse burning. He cannot stamp it out. The caption says so.
PUBLIC INDIGNATION
LIQUOR INTERESTS
He Can't Put It Out
SERIES G, No. 13.
Published by the American Issue Publishing Company, Westerville, Ohio.
Who issued it
The American Issue Publishing Company of Westerville, Ohio, the publishing arm of the Anti-Saloon League of America, in 1917, with a drawing by Sam Fickel. "Series G, No. 13" marks it as one sheet in a numbered set. The Library of Congress copy is public domain, with no known restrictions. No NAID is given.
How to read it
This is private political advocacy, not a government poster, and it sits in this pool because of its date. It is a fair specimen of a single-issue lobby at work. The League does not argue the case against liquor here. It argues that the case has already won: indignation is lit, it is big, and the other side can only run. That is a bandwagon claim, and it is designed to make opponents feel outnumbered before they count.
The cartoon also collapses everyone who made, sold, or drank alcohol into one fat man in a hat. Brewers, saloon keepers, farmers who sold grain, and citizens who simply liked a beer and did not want the state deciding otherwise vanish into "Liquor Interests." That move made it easier to treat a question of personal liberty as a fight against a cabal.
The League had every right to make the argument. Whether or not its reading of public feeling was accurate, a sheet can be right about the crowd and still wrong about the people on the other side. For government posters of the same war, which leaned on the same shortcuts in a different cause, see Food Is Ammunition and Hun or Home? The temperance case study covers the Anti-Saloon League's American Issue posters beside the wets' signed advertising.
Sources
- FRAME object record, He Can't Put It Out, 1917. American Issue Publishing Company (Anti-Saloon League of America); drawing by Sam Fickel.
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, item 2001703874, retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (published 1917; no known restrictions).
